Who has wood fuelled heating & hot water? I have many questions!

[FlingonTheValiant]

Are you pleased with it? Would you recommend it?

And how do you have you system set up?
Is it radiators, under-floor, in an outhouse etc?

Tell me everything you can think of please!

Thank you :)

I use a wood burner to heat all my radiators and hot water, the model is an Olymberyl Aiden that can produce a maximum of 21 kw output radiated and to heat water, it is the best investment I have ever made since the fuel costs nothing bar transport and crushing costs. The stove has paid for itself in less than a year with the fuel savings alone so I would certainly recommend this particular model to anyone. The stove heats a 4 bedroom house and due to the high output I have installed a second copper storage cylinder to hold the excess hot water, my previous oil boiler was a joke in comparrison. All my fuel comes in the form of recycled pallets which I get for free or sometimes am paid to remove, I take them to a local quarry in 7 ton loads were they are put through a rock crusher and broken up into small pieces that fit into the stove, this only costs 20 pounds per 7 ton load, I would burn approx 2 loads in a year so its a very cheap, efficent and green way to heat my home, my only complaint is that it can be too warm at times.

bunjies, I would recommend the solar heating tubes for warm water, I have three solar heating set-ups, one is a bank of thermomax solar tubes, the second is a chinese copy of the thermomax and the third is a homemade oil filled collector which during the summer months gives me 2 copper cylinders full of warm (55-65 celius) water for free, the pumps for the tubes are solar powered so give a nice linear flow. In the winter months I also use the tubes to preheat the central heating system and to heat the water, try ebay for the chinese solar tubes as they have come down in price a lot.

That sounds fab conculainey.

We heat our house and hot water with entirely with wood.

We have a 24kw stove which runs 14 radiators. We have a 300l hot water tank. We also do most of our cooking in winter on the stove.

We have a closed door fire in the living room which we light when it gets really cold.

For the summer we have solar pannel atatched to the same hot water tank (not just summer - they were working today).

Positives:

House is warmer than it was when we had an oil boiler.
Wood is much much cheaper than oil
I like the fact we are in control of our environment.
It makes the place feel very homely.

negatives:
Hard work - chopping stacking and moving wood takes alot of work. We get through between 15 and 20 m3 each winter.
Needs constant attention: We come home from work each lunchtime so we manage to keep it going all day; With care we can get it to go all night, but in reality that happens about 3 nights a week.
Mess - carrying wood into the house causes mess whatever you do, and the house is definately dustier.

HTH

I also agree that if you both work full time it will be hard to keep the house warm all day.

Wow, thanks for all these replies everyone! These systems all sound great. I'm going to look more carefully in a bit.

Conculainey and Frenchfancy, you both sound like you have the kind of setup that would work for us.

For the next few years only one of us will be full time (childcare and study commitments), but DH is hoping to work from home once he qualifies, and as we'll be in France DH is hoping that we'll all be home at lunchtime.

Thanks again all!

We had a woodburning stove and back boiler for all our heating and hot water in a 2 bed cottage once upon a time. It was radiators.

Neither the house or the water was very warm and we spent a lot of money on wood. We also spent a lot of time chopping wood. I hope you have a good axe and some big jumpers. And a warm pub nearby!

When we were in a position to buy our own house "mains gas" was at the top of our list of desirable features. No amount of period charm, cottage cuteyness is worth being that cold for.